tiptoeing across the ice
by Kyoshi7989
Summary: He is everything that she wants to forget but can't bring herself to let go of. Zutara angst. Strong T.


**tiptoeing across the ice**

There is a moment—there's always a moment—when she remembers the battle with Azula and her lungs stop contracting and her fists clench and Katara

can't

move.

She see his form outlined against the fiery white as he clasps the lightening to his chest, and collapses to the ground. Everything feels blurry at first, because—spirits—Zuko—_dead_—

It's too much for her to handle. The one person she never had to take care of, and in those few moments, he was almost

gone.

Weeks after the incident, she begins to recall Zuko's hands reaching for her. Perhaps a shiver wracked through his body…perhaps his glazed eyes stared at her desperately…perhaps—

Perhaps she should stop _trying_ to remember one of the worst moments of her life, especially when in the company of her new boyfriend.

But Katara's brain rushes ahead of herself, forcing her into a world where Zuko isn't simply injured, but he's been ripped apart from the inside out—and there he is, trying so fucking_ hard_ anyway.

As Aang's secure, warm arm wraps around her, Katara shudders.

* * *

Katara recalls farther back than that, though. She remembers the mission to find the dirty _bastard_ who murdered her mother.

After they left him there, weak and disgusting and not even _worth_ her anger, Katara and Zuko didn't speak. He watched silently as she demolished three trees in a row, flung a few animals into the bushes, fell to her knees, and sobbed into her hands.

Zuko did not reach out to her, but he watched her. And when she had cried so hard that she'd exhausted every inch of herself, he asked her quietly, "Are you okay?"

As Katara raises her head tearfully from where she sits on the grass, his eyes meet hers, angry and sorrowful and shining with tears. Something electric passes between them that makes Zuko's breath hitch, and she knows then that she doesn't have to answer.

She doesn't like to remember that particular journey very much at all. Katara is still waiting to decide whether the look in Zuko's eyes as he gazed at her

(_I understand your pain_)

should be any different.

Sp, she fulfills her time accepting panda lilies from Aang and pecking him on the cheek, and doesn't think about her mother at all—or wonder how Zuko lost his.

* * *

Sometimes, at night, she recalls the feeling of Zuko's warm body falling on top of hers.

His arms wrapped around her waste as he swept her out of danger's way, and his legs were splayed awkwardly between hers as they rolled onto the ground. Katara doesn't want to wish for his thigh gliding between her legs, so she doesn't.

Instead, Katara takes in a breath, slowly slides her hand to the juncture of her thighs, and does not imagine

him

inside

her

because that would be dirty and disgusting and not really her at all, wouldn't it?

She and Aang haven't kissed in weeks.

* * *

Back at the beginning, when everything was simple and easy, he stormed her village and terrified all of the children. Zuko terrified _everyone_, years ago, in the era that Katara wants so desperately to forget, but cannot bring herself to let go.

She feels like laughing. The irony—what delicious irony—that when he returns to her village years later, it is for a wedding.

Hers.

* * *

In their unconventional and confusing past, there is only ever one memory that she finds worth revisiting. Ironically, it was far from pleasant at the time. Somehow, this is what makes it bearable.

_"The Fire Nation took my mother away from me!" she'd yelled at him, crouching down to the floor in sorrow and self-righteous anger._

_She heard the rustle of his robes as he turned towards her. "I'm—"_

"Sorry," Katara apologizes for her fiancé as Aang storms out of the hut and into the rebuilt Southern Water Tribe, now a lively, bustling town of glistening ice and snow. The heated exchanged of moments prior hangs stubbornly between them, forcing Katara to acknowledge its existence. At now, of all times, days away from her wedding, Zuko and Aang choose to argue, nearly coming to blows over the tense past that they never quite resolved.

But Zuko doesn't react to her apology, merely continues to stand with his fists clenched and eyes smoldering.

"He doesn't—I'm sure he didn't mean it," Katara says awkwardly, longing to defuse his anger as she fidgets with her robe.

The Firelord sighs at her words and nearly falls back onto the sealskin floor on his knees. As he massages his temples wearily, Katara watches carefully, memorizing every angle of his sharp, noble face.

Zuko glances up with a smile laced with bitterness and irony - now, just as in the caverns of Ba Sing Se, he kneels before her proud figure - and she fights back a flash of yet another moment of anger and absolution, insensitivity and forgiveness.

Under the weight of their shared memories, Zuko and Katara shiver.

"It's stupid that you two have to fight. I wish…" Katara mutters, "I wish none of this had ever happened."

The Firelord watches her out of the corner of his eye, and whispers, "That's something we have in common."

It isn't the only thing.


End file.
